3.5 SECURITY ISSUES FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED BUSINESSES

 Small and medium sized businesses use the Internet and networked applications to reach new customers and serve their existing ones more effectively. At the same time, new security threats and legislation puts increased pressure on business networks to be reliable and secure.

Business Challenges

According to recent studies, security is the biggest challenge facing small and mediumsized businesses. Everchanging security threats from both inside and outside the business network can wreak havoc on business operations, affecting profitability and customer satisfaction. Small and mediumsized businesses must also comply with new regulations and laws created to protect consumer privacy and secure electronic information.

Security issues for small and medium – sized businesses are classified into 5 basic categories:

Worms and Viruses

As per research, Computer worms and viruses remain the most common security threat, with 75 percent of small and medium businesses affected by it.. Worms and viruses can have a devastating effect on business continuity and the bottom line. 

Smarter, more destructive strains are spreading faster than ever, infecting an entire office in seconds. Cleaning the infected computers takes much longer. The catastrophic results are lost orders, corrupted databases and angry customers. As businesses struggle to update their computers with the latest operating system patches and antivirus software, new viruses can penetrate their defenses any day of the week.

Meanwhile, employees spread viruses and spyware by unwittingly accessing malicious Websites, downloading untrustworthy material, or opening malicious email attachments. These attacks are unintentionally invited into the organization, but still cause significant financial losses. Security systems must detect and repel worms, viruses, and spyware at all points in the network.

Information Theft

Information theft is big business today. Hackers break into business networks to steal credit card or social security numbers for profit. Small and mediumsized businesses are at risk because they are seen as an easier mark than large corporations. Protecting the perimeter of the network is a good start, but it isn’t enough, since many information thefts have help from a trusted insider, such as an employee or contractor.

Information theft can be costly to small and mediumsized businesses, since they rely on satisfied customers and a good reputation to help grow their business. Businesses which does not adequately protect their information could face negative publicity, government fines or even lawsuits. Any security strategy must prevent theft of sensitive electronic information from both inside and outside the  business.

Business Availability

Computer worms and viruses can drastically affect the reliability of network resources, which in turn affects businesses’ ability to respond quickly to their customers; but worms and viruses are not the only threat to business availability. With networks so critical to daytoday business operations, cyberterrorists have begun targeting businesses for blackmail, threatening to bring down Websites and ecommerce operations unless their demands are met. These denialofservice (DoS) attacks send large volumes of traffic to a critical network element, either causing it to fail or to be unable to process legitimate traffic. Once again, the results are disastrous: data and orders are lost and customer requests are not answered.

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